Ново

During its turbulent and long life, which temporarily faded away during the wars and ended in the tragic year of 1923, the magazine "Novo Vreme" by Dimitar Blagoev invariably devoted a large space to the problems of art and especially fiction. Blagoev was deeply convinced that fiction is one of the best means for society's self-knowledge, that the influence it can exert on life is enormous. This conviction inspired him to tirelessly care for illuminating in "Novo Vreme" the problems of art and literature from a "socialist point of view", to lead a consistent struggle for realistic and progressive fiction.

The work K. Kuev on Chernorizets by Professor Hrabar is the result of several years of research work, remarkable for the scope and depth of the studies, for the fruitful respect for the "black" textological studies, for the comprehensive knowledge of every step of the movement of Slavic thought in this area. Its precursors were a number of smaller publications by the author, which outlined some of the main problematic elements of the future book. Against the background of the scientific literature on the notable Old Bulgarian writer, created over a period of nearly 150 years (its beginning, as is known, was laid by K. Kalaydovich in 1824) and including a significant number of valuable works - but works partially illuminating the issues surrounding Hrabar - the monographic nature of Kuev's work stands out. Compositionally, the book is divided into two heterogeneous parts - a literary-historical study and an edition of the Tale in 73 transcripts, of which 67 contain its entire text. But for its general spirit, for the appearance and for the new word of philological science, the synthesis of the author's literary-historical and textual awareness has proven decisive - an indisputable guarantee and at the same time a measure, an indicator of its real value. It is difficult to say whether there is a leading factor in this unity of mutually complementary knowledge; practically, what is more important is that the 57 transcripts published for the first time significantly broaden the horizons of the literary historian, suggest new statements of questions, correct or confirm already established positions.

It has become a tradition for every review of a new book studying Karavelov's work to begin with the statement that with his strong and complex personality the writer still attracts the attention of literary history and criticism today. And this statement does not sound clichéd, because it notes a significant literary-historical fact. Our modernity has precisely realized a complete edition of Karavelov's works and made a decisive contribution to Karavelov studies both with voluminous monographs and with individual studies that pose new and interesting issues. At the same time, the critical eye discovers in contemporary studies of Karavelov a more emphatically pronounced specific literary approach. In place of factual and biographical research, in place of the descriptive approach, there logically comes the aspiration for a more concrete consideration of the aesthetic and theoretical problems posed by Karavelov's work, for the study of his writing skills in relation to the laws of the Literary Process, the peculiarities of his talent, etc. Tsveta Undzhieva's book has its positive significance primarily as a phenomenon that supports this direction in the development of the science of Karavelov. It not only discovers and uses new factual material, not only enriches ideas and specifies accents, but above all seeks a solution to essential literary-historical, theoretical and stylistic problems posed by Karavelov's work. It is precisely this focus of the study that arouses interest in it and gives it its own appearance.

There is no dispute - the old literatures of Bulgarians, Serbs and Rus' show some common features in content, trends, development, style, genres, writers, etc. This is precisely what gives reason in the history of the pan-European literary development to consider them as a group of literatures, to search for and point out features that represent something new in this development. To a certain extent, the latest publication of the well-known and prominent Soviet scholar and medievalist Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachev - "Old Slavic Literatures as a System" is due to this indisputable commonality. More precisely, the thoughts expressed here further develop and detail his opinions expressed several years earlier. His last publication, in fact an expanded and revised report, delivered in Prague in 1968 at the VI Slavic Congress, touches on several very important problems in the history of the old Slavic literatures: 1. Phenomena of literary transplantation; 2. Old Slavonic literature as a mediator and the Slavic review (redaction) of Byzantine culture; 3. Genres and types of Old Slavonic literatures; 4. Old Slavonic literatures and folklore; 5. Old Slavonic literatures and the visual arts; 6. Old Slavonic literatures and reality.